Thursday, November 13, 2008

Sneak Preview Of My Sexy Steamy Romance Novel!

Time to face facts: I’m never going to get rich editing manuscripts for a vanity publisher. And upgrading to a career in Japanese tentacle porn won't happen, either, as evidenced by this actual transcript of my last-week’s job interview:

TENTACLE PORN MOGUL: Are you legally old enough to do sex-themed work in the United States, which is to say at least 18?

ME: Yes.

TENTACLE PORN MOGUL: Then you’re too old to appeal to our viewers. Get lost.

Nor will I get rich writing my Sundaycolumn, especially since most of the papers that publish it are expected to close down in two months. (Career advice: if your boss walks in and says “Hey, everyone, come meet our new staff writer,” and you turn around and see me standing there, reduce your personal expenditures and update your resume immediately. My presence never bodes well for such things.)

Thus, I am trying a new approach: I have written a novel. A sexy novel, to be specific, because market research indicates sex sells.

It was easy. Thanks to all the books I’ve been reading and editing at my vanity-publishing job, I have learned via osmosis exactly how they should be written. All I need to do now is find somebody who will publish my book and sell a million copies for me. If you’re a wealthy publisher with powerful industry connections, read my wonderful novel here, and then e-mail me with an offer.

* * *

PASSIONATELY PASSIONATE PASSION

A sexy, steamy novel of passion, love, adventure and passion, with lots of good parts

Chapter 1

Selena Mackenzie was a gorgeous 19-year-old virgin with large breasts in a small town in Scotland where she led a sheltered life that was very sheltered and never knew the touch of a man. She was really innocent and pure. Meanwhile, Thor Thorson the Viking prince who looked like Fabio only with horns on his helmet, was in Vikingland getting onto a Viking boat with dark smoldering eyes he used to smolderingly look at the boat with. He said, “Forward, men. We will ravish the Scottish coast with virgins in it, and since I’m giving you orders remember I’m not just really hot and muscular but also a powerful Alpha male.”

Chapter 2

Selena Mackenzie had a hard life because Selena’s mother died and Selena’s father was mean to her and all the other girls hated Selena because they were jealous of her beauty, so if Selena were, like, kidnapped by a sex god who wanted to make her his exclusive monogamous love slave in a gilded cage with lots of luxurious furnishings and servants and orgasms, it’s not like she would have any reason to feel homesick or anything to make her feel sad. Meanwhile, on a dragon-shaped Viking boat that looked like a big wooden dragon filled with men floating on the water, crossing the stormy seas between Vikingland and Scotland was Thor Thorson the Viking prince, who was very sensitive under his hard, muscled, sweaty, (but he doesn’t smell bad or anything), muscular smoldering Viking Prince exterior.

Chapter 3

Everyone in Selena’s small Scottish coastal village off the coast of Scotland started screaming when they saw Thor Thorson’s Viking boat fleet appear over the horizon like some sort of fleet of boats coming over the edge of an ocean that slowly got bigger as it got closer to the small Scottish village you live in.

Chapter 4

When the Viking raiders came into Selena’s village, everybody started to scream “Oh no it’s the Vikings help what are we going to do.” Selena hid under the table and watched Thor rampaging through the village like a mighty Viking that looked really hot. She felt scared. Very scared. Very, very, very, scared. But she also felt a weird new sensation she’d never felt before in her belly, and she didn’t recognize it since she was innocent and pure, so she thought “I must’ve had some bad haggis for lunch.” Because she didn’t know what passion was. She thought maybe that weird feeling in her belly was something she ate that was bad. Like maybe bad haggis. (It wasn’t the haggis, though. It was love.)

Chapter 5

Thor carried Selena to his boat and took her back to Vikingland and locked her up in his castle, which was made of white marble with gold tiles on the roofs. Selena’s bed had a red silk cover that shone like shining silk, and as she leaned back on the red silk that the bedcover was made of she said to Thor “I want to go home” and Thor laughed cruelly and said “No you delectable thing you belong to me and my money and my muscles forever. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

Chapter 6

Thor and Selena were having sex that was steaming hot but completely politically incorrect and not suitable for children, because no means no, but that was a long time ago, and Vikings were not enlightened. So Thor said “You’re so beautiful” and Selena said “I know” and Thor said “Let’s do it” and Selena said “No” and Thor said “Yes” and Selena said “No” and Thor said "Yes" and Selena said "No" but Thor wouldn’t listen and Selena yelled out loud “NO!” and this went on for a long long time and eventually Selena changed her mind.

Chapter 7

Selena still felt homesick for Scotland. Especially since everyone who used to be a jerk to her in the small Scottish coastal village got killed in the Viking raid. Then Thor came in to her luxurious room and said “I know you’re homesick, so I brought you some tartan and a bagpipe.” Then he gave her a piece of plaid-looking cloth that was made of tartan, and a bagpipe. Selena’s heart swelled with love because that was the most thoughtful and romantic gift anybody had ever done for her. A different part of Thor swelled up just like Selena’s heart did, and they had sex again. Then they got married and the sex never got dull so they lived happily ever after.

The End.

Copyright in the USA already filed with the Library of Congress, plus I mailed a copy to myself with the postmark over the seal on the envelope because I KNOW one of you bastards is going to try and steal this and pretend you wrote it yourself because you’re jealous because you could never write anything this good, like those bastards in high school that made fun of me and said my writing was stupid and I’m glad they did it because it gave me the courage and inspiration and inner emotional strength to carry on. And I am stronger for it. And you can’t steal my novel because I already filled the U!S!A! copyright with the Library of Congress and mailed a copy of myself through the mail with a postmark, if you try to steal this I’ll take you to court and sue and win. Some of my very good friends are lawyers who are very good. I have lots of friends now.

* * *

So what do y’all think? I gave it that surprise ending because my vast vanity editorial experience tells me that the expository copyright notice is generally the single most interesting part of any given book.

Before she died in our motorcycle accident, my 12 year old daughter was writing a novel during the summer and I was editing it. I am going to finish it for her. Currently, I am filling in the story arc.

Since my doctor says it will be 6 months before I can return to work (and now I no longer have a job to return to) I can't think of a better way to use my time.

I am in awe of your awesome writing talent and will do my best to mimic the awesome way that you redundantly reuse words in such an awesomely reduntant way so that your meanings get reinforced in the readers mind as they read the awesome words that you wrote.

I can only pray that I would get you to be the editor of my own awesome writing effort.

By the end of a day and often at the beginning, I walk like an eighty year old man.

In stores when I see something that Jessie-girl would like or a dress that would have flattered her figure, I tear up. The good thing is when I say "I love you Jessie-daughter", I can hear her say, "I love you too, Daddy."

My proficiency with 4-Star level Sudoku puzzles is still not as good as it once was, but it is getting better. My success rate used to be in the high 90's, but now I can solve about 50 percent of them.

I am very forgetful about where I lay the mail down. That makes me sure that my doctor is right that I am not ready to go back to work. In managing the payables for a company, organization is critical and my CRS is worse now. I do n ot know how much is from grief and how much from having my brains scrambled. It might be a bit of both.

Currently I am working on a detailed account of what I have been through and will include it with a christmas card to everyone who wrote me get well wishes, or sent donations to me or Jessie's Library Fund.

Oh, yes, I guess I could learn how to do that -- email you instead of watching in a stalkerish way and maintaining the shrines of you I've got in my living room closets. (One is personal-writing-themed, and one is published-writing-themed, you see.)

My email address is posted at the top of the blog archive of my columns, though why anyone would end up in the backwater blogspot eddy of my column archive is beyond me. So here it is: aliciad.watkins at yahoo dot com.

I flatter myself to think I DO have good copyediting skills; I'm pretty sure Marc thinks so, as I've been spending much of my time here at the paper (where I am stealing the Internet right now, in fact) since January copyediting. He recruited me for the column when I started a personal blog to prove that blogging entertainment news wouldn't be that tough for a reporter.

I "discovered" your writing at the Advocate, I think Marc told you, and I don't mind saying in front of everyone who might read it that my friends from Tennessee who were visiting at the time and I sat in Javapalooza in Middletown (where I don't live) laughing our fool heads off at your interview of the guy who was for banning smoking in cars with children.

But please, do email. I don't know much about vanity press, but I did have a professor who published his own novel in the UK, and I was a writing center tutor for three years and ESL teacher for four -- so I might have the stomach for it.

The copyright notice was very good, but you forgot to identify your book as "A Fictional Novel" What if the publishing house sends it to the wrong editor? Or publishes it as some other kind of novel? You have to think about these things!

Isn't "decolumnizing" what Lorena Bobbitt did to John Bobbitt when she took a kitchen knife and bobbed it.

I read that she has become a hair stylist. The article didn't say whether or not she specializes in bob cuts.

I think decolumnizing would be very demoralizing, and that would explain Jen's willingness to perform in tentacle porn which Walt Disney was filming as early as the year I was born. Check out the fun that begins at the 3:27 in the clip when you click on my name.

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About Me

Jennifer Abel is an American writer who began her career in print media three minutes before the Internet killed the industry. After starting at a small Connecticut daily she moved to the Hartford Advocate, an alt-weekly where her journalistic coups included infiltrating a Furries convention and working on a phone sex line (which fired her six hours later). Since then she’s written for, or been reprinted in, dozens of print and web outlets, including Playboy, the Guardian, Salon, AlterNet, Mashable, the Daily Dot and pretty much every website with the words "cannabis" or "legalize it" in the title. Once, when she was young and naïve and needed the money, she unwittingly edited SEO copy for a spammer. However, in light of the spambot comments she’s deleted from her own blogs since then, she figures she’s more than repaid that particular karmic debt. Jennifer is currently looking for professional, non-spam writing jobs; interested editors are enthusiastically invited to e-mail her.